by Paden Vaughan, Huck, April 25, 2017
The app that’s kickstarting a food-sharing revolution
Growing up as part of a large family in Iowa, she developed an affinity for saving items that others discarded: spending days salvaging tin cans, wood from foreclosed houses and just about anything else sellable.
The idea that one person’s trash could be another’s treasure resonated, and she dreamed of starting a business centred on sustainability.
After realising that over a third of all food produced globally goes to waste – while almost one billion people go hungry – the pair teamed up to kickstart a food-sharing revolution.
Their solution is OLIO: an app that allows users to redistribute unwanted food instead of sending it to a landfill. To put it another way, it’s like Tinder for leftovers.
“We cannot continue to waste food at the rate we do,” she says emphatically. “The impact of climate change, coupled with the effects of food waste, forecasts mass civil unrest. I don’t think people are going to start eating every single thing they buy, so sharing is, by default, the only answer.”
Analysis: This company is taking part in the food waste revolution. Even if someone is conservative with what they buy, it’s likely that there will be some excess. So, in order to operate in the circular economy, we need to fix this part of the cycle to prevent food from going to waste.
